


culturae de dissonantia

by ProwlingThunder



Series: quia non solus ambulo [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Cultural Displacement, Gen, Linguistic Difficulties, Temporal Displacement, Young Ardyn, timetravel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 05:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13241529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: Ardyn went to bed in Costlemark. And he woke up in Costlemark.But it was the wrong Costlemark.





	culturae de dissonantia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlackJacketsandPens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackJacketsandPens/gifts).



> *culturae de dissonantia is Latin for "of cultural dissonance."  
> *quia non solus ambulo is Latin for "for I walk not alone."
> 
> This is all Blackjacket's fault, whose friends of Ardyn (Pyrrhus and Mercutio) I originally borrowed but have since replaced with my own (Ustrina and Luculentus). Enjoy!

Costlemark Tower didn't look the way it had when he had gone to sleep. For starters, _no one_ was where Ardyn had left them the night before, not even Ustrina, who shouldn't have been able to move without waking him, seeing as he'd been being used as a _pillow._ In addition to his missing companions, large portions of the room were gone; whole sections of wall, much of the stained glass, portions of the floor, including the spots where Gilgamesh had planted himself to watch the door and Luculentus had stretched out, entirely unconcerned about silly things like how small his bedroll actually was as long as he wasn't out in the rain.

He could see clear out into the forest, at the huge, _ancient_ looking trunks and rays of glorious sunshine. There wasn't a drop of last night's rain anywhere to be found.

There wasn't any people, either, judging from the way no one responded when he called out.

 

Further inspection proved the winding stairs down to the ground level had collapsed several flights, leaving an impassable layer of stone behind. Which was as strange as everything else Ardyn had seen since waking up, he guessed, but meant he had to warp his way to the ground. They had wanted one night camped in a secure area, and according to Gilgamesh, Costlemark had been... not a military outpost, Ardyn didn't think-- but he didn't remember now what he'd said.

It felt weird to be walking around without his Shield by his side. Weirder than missing Ustrina and Luculentus. Gilgamesh had been with him since he was a _boy,_ and Ardyn didn't remember a time without him.

Gilgamesh didn't answer when he called, but Ardyn knew better than to think he would have left willingly.

 

The chocobo corrals were collapsed and half-buried, and looked like they had been that way since before he had been born. He hoped they had gotten out okay, but they definitely weren't _here._

 

The road that led past the... fort? was supposed to be fitted stone, albeit damaged and discolored by disuse and lack of care through the past few decades.

Just last night Luculentus had mentioned that he had heard merchants complaining about the state of it, citing it as a reason trade further on had become scarce; Ardyn had pestered Pyrrhus for at least an hour, trying to work out how much it might cost the fledgling Lucian kingdom to repair the damage, or if it was even feasible in their current state. _Chocobos_ could cross it with no trouble, but drawn carts...

Now metal ribboned on either side of it like elegant railing, and it seemed to be made of a strange type of black stone, smoothed flat and darkened the color of poisoned blood. Ardyn tapped at it with the haft of a summoned spear, but it didn't ripple, smear, give or otherwise do anything that stone wasn't supposed to do.

Then a cart without any chocobos at all, made of metal and colored a truly _horrific_ shade of green, screamed at him as it made its way past, and Ardyn decided that perhaps walking _on_ the road wasn't the best possible choice he could have made.

 

He thought, briefly, later, that it could have possible been some form of daemon. And then he discarded that thought. It was daylight, and if it were, certainly it would have come after him.

He was reasonably sure it had been some form of cart. Though he didn't know who would have the gall to even _think_ of running over the crown prince of Lucis.

 

Gilgamesh probably would have put a sword in it on principle, which was a thought that kept him entertained on the _very_ long walk back to the previous-- and apparently _nonexistent--_ village.

Surely it hadn't been more than a few miles....?

 

At some point in what Ardyn is _guessing_ to be the afternoon, he ambled into a farming community with very stately houses, where an elderly woman speaking in awful, heavily accented Sol clucked at him about being out in the heat-- or, he thought she was scolding him for that, at least-- asked him if he had eaten, and without waiting for an answer had drug him over the threshold of her home and planted him at a table. Then, while he was still reeling from the whole ordeal, she pulled something out of a _fascinating_ box, put it on an obscure looking counter, and a few minutes later, placed a hot meal in front of him.

It would have been rude not to eat it, but he doubted even Ustrina would have had any idea what it was supposed to be....

The aging grandmother did something to a small box nearby, chattering all the while. He tried desperately to untangle her words while he picked at his meal, aiming for _just enough_ to be polite while the foreign tastes tried to overwhelm him. Then the box made _noise,_ a person with an equally atrocious accent sounding from it, and he couldn't help but stop and stare at it.

 

Everything had been overwhelming since he had woken up. He wasn't sure he was going to find anything familiar anytime soon, and he didn't really like that idea.

 

"That-- bad," the matron gasped in response to... _something_ the box had said. Ardyn stared at her in confusion, wondering if those sounds she had made around the words were also supposed to be words or if she really did just speak that badly. He was having difficulty untangling what had been spoken by the box, the words too long and unconnected for him to grasp. It _wasn't_ old Sol and it certainly wasn't what was becoming modern Lucian... "Poor animals."

"Poor _animals?"_ Ardyn repeated, perplexed. Her accent made the words thick, but they sounded almost worse on his own tongue, unfamiliar with rolling his letters in this way. "What is it that is happening? What did the box say?"

She shifted her gaze from the object to stare at him, too, looking downright _mystified_ for a moment and then absolutely crushed, pitying, somehow. He tried not to take it badly, but he could already feel the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. "Which does not sleep fell," she started, badly, and then... something, something.

_What?_

Apparently giving up, she repeated her words and pantomimed: a circular object, a _crown_ he realized after a moment, watching her put this invisible circular object on her head. And then, she drew a line across her throat with her pointer.

 _"Dead crown,"_ she said. "Settlement fall."

 

Abstractly, he wondered if the Gods' gift could actually freeze his blood in his veins.

**Author's Note:**

> Tentatively set at "just before he takes the throne," not far into his "save people" crusade.


End file.
